
Class 

Book :V 



4 



<L^>-^p-<y V 



mtmiht CDucational ittonogmpl^iS 

EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO 

PROFESSOR OF THK PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 
IN EDUCATION 



BY 

JOHN DEWEY 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



3S{Jf 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 

(€1)t iHitiec^ttie ^tt0, Cambntige 



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y^^^ ^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY JOHN DEWEY 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



The author has drawn freely upon his essay on Ethical 
Principles Underlying Education, published in the Third 
Year-Book of The National Herbart Society for the Study of 
Education. He is indebted to the Society for permission to 
use this material. 



LIBRARY of OONGRESS 
Iwo Cop(€6 Heceived 

T Jof\ A. 



M\>mUst (Btmc^tioml jEonogmpi^jS 

Editor, Henry Suzzallo, Professor of The Philosophy of 
Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, New 
York. 

NUMBERS READY OR IN PREPARATION 

General Educational Theory 

EDUCATION. An essay and other selections. By Ralph Waldo 

Emerson. Readv. 

THE MEANING OF INFANCY, and The Part Played by Infancy m 

the Evolution of Man. By John Fiske. Readv 

EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY, and The New Definition of the Cull 

tivated Man. By Charles W. Eliot, President. of Harvard.University. 

Ready. 
MORAL PRINCIPLES IN EDUCATION. By John Dewey, Professor 

of Philosophy, Columbia University. Readv 

OUR NATIONAL IDEALS IN EDUCATION. By Elmer e! 

Brown, United States Commissioner of Education. In preparation. 
THE SCHOOL AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION. By Henry Suzzallo, 

Professor of the Philosophy of Education, Teachers College, Columbia 

University. In preparation. 

Administration and Supervision of Schools 

CONTINUATION SCHOOLS. By Paul H. Hanus, Professor of Educa- 
tion. Harvard University. /« ireiaration. 

CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF EDUCATION. ByE. RCubberly, 
Professor of Education, Leland Stanford Jr. University. 

_. _ _ In Preparation. 

THE SUPERVISION OF SCHOOLS. By Henry Suzzallo, Professor of 
the Philosophy of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. 

In preparation. 

Methods of Teaching 

SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH. By George Herbert Palmer, 
Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University. Ready. 

ETHICAL AND MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS. By George 
Herbert Palmer, Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University. 

Ready. 

TEACHING CHILDREN TO STUDY. By Lida B. Earhart, In- 
structor in Elementary Education, Teachers College, Columba Univer- 
sity. {Double Number. ) Ready 

TYPES OF TEACHING. By Frederic Ernest Farrington, Asso- 
ciate Professor of Education, University of Texas. In preparation. 



Price 33 cents, each, net, post f aid 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
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CONTENTS 

Introduction v 

I. The Moral Purpose of the School i 

II. The Moral Training Given by the 

School Community ... 5 

III. The Moral Training from Methods 

OF Instruction . . . . 19 

IV. The Social Nature of the Course 

OF Study 29 

V. The Psychological Aspect of Moral 

Education 45 

Outline 59 



INTRODUCTION 

Education as a public business 

It is one of the complaints of the schoolmaster 
that the public does not defer to his professional 
opinion as completely as it does to that of prac- 
titioners in other professions. At first sight it 
might seem as though this indicated a defect 
either in the public or in the profession ; and yet 
a wider view of the situation would suggest that 
such a conclusion is not a necessary one. The 
relations of education to the public are different 
from those of any other professional work. Edu- 
cation is a public business with us, in a sense that 
the protection and restoration of personal health 
or legal rights are not. To an extent character- 
istic of no other institution, save that of the state 
itself, the school has power to modify the social 
order. And under our political system, it is the 
right of each individual to have a voice in the 
making of social policies as, indeed, he has a vote 
in the determination of political affairs. If this 

V 



INTRODUCTION 

be true, education is primarily a public business, 
and only secondarily a specialized vocation. The 
layman, then, will always have his right to some 
utterance on the operation of the public schools. 

Education as expert service 

I have said "some utterance," but not "all"; 
for school-mastering has its own special myste- 
ries, its own knowledge and skill into which the 
untrained layman cannot penetrate. We are just 
beginning to recognize that the school and the 
government have a common problem in this re- 
spect. Education and politics are two functions 
fundamentally controlled by public opinion. Yet 
the conspicuous lack of efficiency and economy 
in the school and in the state has quickened our 
recognition of a larger need for expert service. 
But just where shall public opinion justly ex- 
press itself, and what shall properly be left to 
expert judgment ? 

The relations of expert opinion and public opinion 

In so far as broad policies and ultimate ends 
affecting the welfare of all are to be determined, 

vi 



INTRODUCTION 

the public may well claim its right to settle issues 
by the vote or voice of majorities. But the selec- 
tion and prosecution of the detailed ways and 
means by which the public will is to be executed 
efficiently must remain largely a matter of spe- 
cialized and expert service. To the superior 
knowledge and technique required here, the pub- 
lic may well defer. 

In the conduct of the schools, it is well for the 
citizens to determine the ends proper to them, 
and it is their privilege to judge of the efficacy 
of results. Upon questions that concern all the 
manifold details by which children are to be con- 
verted into desirable types of men and women, 
the expert schoolmaster should be authoritative, 
at least to a degree commensurate with his su- 
perior knowledge of this very complex problem. 
The administration of the schools, the making 
of the course of study, the selection of texts, 
the prescription of methods of teaching, these 
are matters with which the people, or their re- 
presentatives upon boards of education, cannot 
deal save with danger of becoming mere med- 
dlers. 

vu 



INTRODUCTION 

The discussion of moral education an illustration 
of mistaken views of laymen 

Nowhere is the validity of this distinction be- 
tween education as a public business and edu- 
cation as an expert professional service brought 
out more clearly than in an analysis of the public 
discussion of the moral work of the school. How 
frequently of late have those unacquainted with 
the special nature of the school proclaimed the 
moral ends of education and at the same time 
demanded direct ethical instruction as the par- 
ticular method by which they were to be realized ! 
"This, too, in spite of the fact that those who 
know best the powers and limitations of instruc- 
tion as an instrument have repeatedly pointed out 
the futility of assuming that knowledge of right 
constitutes a guarantee of right doing. How 
common it is for those who assert that educa- 
tion is for social efficiency to assume that the 
school should return to the barren discipline of 
the traditional formal subjects, reading, writing, 
and the rest ! This, too, regardless of the fact 
that it has taken a century of educational evolu- 

viii 



INTRODUCTION 

tion to make the course of study varied and rich 
enough to call for those impulses and activities 
of social life which need training in the child.- 
And how many who speak glowingly of the large 
services of the public schools to a democracy of 
free and self-reliant men affect a cynical and 
even vehement opposition to the " self-govern- 
ment of schools " ! These would not have the 
children learn to govern themselves and one 
another, but would have the masters rule them, 
ignoring the fact that this common practice in 
childhood may be a foundation for that evil con- 
dition in adult society where the citizens are ar- 
bitrarily ruled by political bosses. 

One need not cite further cases of the incom- 
petence of the lay public to deal with technical 
questions of school methods. Instances are plen- 
tiful to show that well-meaning people, compe- 
tent enough to judge of the aims and results of 
school work, make a mistake in insisting upon 
the prerogative of directing the technical as- 
pects of education with a dogmatism that would 
not characterize their statements regarding any 
other special field of knowledge or action. 

ix 



INTRODUCTION 

A fundamental understanding of moral princi- 
ples in education 

Nothing can be more useful than for the pub- 
lic and the teaching profession to understand 
their respective functions. The teacher needs to 
understand public opinion and the social order, 
as much as the public needs to comprehend the 
nature of expert educational service. It will take 
time to draw the boundary lines that will be con- 
ducive to respect, restraint, and efficiency in 
those concerned ; but a beginning can be made 
upon fundamental matters, and nothing so touches 
the foundations of our educational thought as a 
discussion of the moral principles in education. 

It is our pleasure to present a treatment of them 
by a thinker whose vital influence upon the re- 
/form of school methods is greater than that of 
^ny of his contemporaries. In his discussion of 
the social and psychological factors in moral edu- 
cation, there is much that will suggest what so- 
cial opinion should determine, and much that will 
indicate what must be left to the trained teacher 
and school official. 



THE MORAL PURPOSE OF 
THE SCHOOL 



THE MORAL PURPOSE OF 
THE SCHOOL 

An English contemporary philosopher has called 
attention to the difference between moral ideas 
and ideas about morality. " Moral ideas " are ideas 
of any sort whatsoever which take effect in con- 
duct and improve it, make it better than it other- 
wise would be. Similarly, one may say, immoral 
ideas are ideas of whatever sort (whether arith- 
metical or geographical or physiological) which 
show themselves in making behavior worse than 
it would otherwise be ; and non-moral ideas, one 
may say, are such ideas and pieces of informa- 
tion as leave conduct uninfluenced for either the 
better or the worse. Now " ideas about morality '* 
may be morally indifferent or immoral or moral. 
There is nothing in the nature of ideas about 
morality, of information about honesty or purity 
or kindness which automatically transmutes such 
ideas into good character or good conduct. 

I 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

This distinction between moral ideas, ideas 
of any sort whatsoever that have become a part 
of character and hence a part of the working mo- 
tives of behavior, and ideas about moral action 
that may remain as inert and ineffective as if 
they were so much knowledge about Egyptian 
archaeology, is fundamental to the discussion of 
moral education. The business of the educator 
— whether parent or teacher — is to see to it that 
the greatest possible number of ideas acquired 
by children and youth are acquired in such a 
vital way that they become moving ideas, mo- 
tive-forces in the guidance of conduct. This 
demand and this opportunity make the moral 
purpose universal and dominant in all instruc- 
tion — whatsoever the topic. Were it not for this 
possibility, the familiar statement that the ulti- 
mate purpose of all education is character- 
forming would be hypocritical pretense ; for as 
every one knows, the direct and immediate at- 
tention of teachers and pupils must be, for the 
greater part of the time, upon intellectual matters. 
It is out of the question to keep direct moral con- 
siderations constantly uppermost. But it is not 

2 



IN EDUCATION 

out of the question to aim at making the methods 
of learning, of acquiring intellectual power, and 
of assimilating subject-matter, such that they will 
render behavior more enlightened, more consist- 
ent, more vigorous than it otherwise would be. 

The same distinction between " moral ideas " 
and "ideas about morality" explains for us a 
source of continual misunderstanding between 
teachers in the schools and critics of education 
outside of the schools. The latter look through the 
school programmes, the school courses of study, 
and do not find any place set apart for instruc- 
tion in ethics or for "moral teaching." Then 
they assert that the schools are doing nothing, 
or next to nothing, for character-training; they 
become emphatic, even vehement, about the 
moral deficiencies of public education. The school- 
teachers, on the other hand, resent these criti- 
cisms as an injustice, and hold not only that they 
do " teach morals," but that they teach them 
every moment of the day, five days in the week. 
In this contention the teachers in principle are 
in the right; if they are in the wrong, it is not 
because special periods are not set aside for what 

3 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

after all can only be teaching about morals, but 
because their own characters, or their school at- 
mosphere and ideals, or their methods of teach- 
ing, or the subject-matter which they teach, are 
not such in detail as to bring intellectual results 
into vital union with character so that they be- 
come working forces in behavior. Without discuss- 
ing, therefore, the limits or the value of so-called 
direct moral instruction (or, better, instruction 
about morals), it may be laid down as fundamen- 
tal that the influence of direct moral instruction, 
even at its very best, is comparatively small in 
amount and slight in influence, when the whole 
field of moral growth through education is taken 
into account. This larger field of indirect and vital 
moral education, the development of character 
through all the agencies, instrumentalities, and 
materials of school life is, therefore, the subject 
of our present discussion. 



THE MORAL TRAINING GIVEN 
BY THE SCHOOL COMMUNITY 



II 

THE MORAL TRAINING GIVEN 
BY THE SCHOOL COMMUNITY 

There cannot be two sets of ethical principles, 
one for life in the school, and the other for life 
outside of the school. As conduct is one, so also 
the principles of conduct are one. The tendency 
to discuss the morals of the school as if the school 
were an institution by itself is highly unfortunate. 
The moral responsibility of the school, and of 
those who conduct it, is to society. The school is 
fundamentally an institution erected by society to 
do a certain specific work, — to exercise a certain 
specific function in maintaining the life and ad- 
vancing the welfare of society. The educational 
system which does not recognize that this fact en- 
tails upon it an ethical responsibility is derelict 
and a defaulter. It is not doing what it was called 
into existence to do, and what it pretends to do. 
Hence the entire structure of the school in gen- 
eral and its concrete workings in particular need 

7 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

to be considered from time to time with refer- 
/ ence to the social position and function of the 
^ school. 

The idea that the moral work and worth of the 
public school system as a whole are to be measured 
by its social value is, indeed, a familiar notion. 
However, it is frequently taken in too limited and 
rigid a way. The social work of the school is often 
limited to training for citizenship, and citizenship 
is then interpreted in a narrow sense as meaning 
capacity to vote intelligently, disposition to obey 
laws, etc. But it is futile to contract and cramp the 
ethical responsibility of the school in this way. 
The child is one, and he must either live his social 
life as an integral unified being, or suffer loss and 
create friction. To pick out one of the many social 
relations which the child bears, and to define the 
work of the school by that alone, is like instituting 
avast and complicated system of physical exercise 
which would have for its object simply the devel- 
opment of the lungs and the power of breathing, 
independent of other organs and functions. The 
child is an organic whole, intellectually, socially, 
and morally, as well as physically. We must take 

8 



IN EDUCATION . 

the child as a member of society in the broadest ' 
sense, and demand for and from the schools what- 
ever is necessary to enable the child intelligently 
to recognize all his social relations and take his 
part in sustaining them. 

To isolate the formal relationship of citizenship 
from the whole system of relations with which it 
is actually interwoven ; to suppose that there is 
some one particular study or mode of treatment 
which can make the child a good citizen ; to sup- 
pose, in other words, that a good citizen is anything 
more than a thoroughly efficient and serviceable )) 
member of society, one with all his powers of 
body and mind under control, is a hampering su- 
perstition which it is hoped may soon disappear 
from educational discussion. 

The child is to be not only a voter and a subject » 
of law ; he is also to be a member of a family, him- 
self in turn responsible, in all probability, for 
rearing and training of future children, thereby 
maintaining the continuity of society. He is to be 
a worker, engaged in some occupation which will 
be of use to society, and which will maintain his 
own independence and self-respect. He is to be • 

9 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

a member of some particular neighborhood and 
community, and must contribute to the values of 
life, add to the decencies and graces of civiliza- 
tion wherever he is. These are bare and formal 
statements, but if we let our imagination translate 
them into their concrete details, we have a wide and 
varied scene. For the child properly to take his 
place in reference to these various functions means 
training in science, in art, in history ; means com- 
mand of the fundamental methods of inquiry and 
the fundamental tools of intercourse and com- 
munication; means a trained and sound body, 
skillful eye and hand ; means habits of industry, 
perseverance ; in short, habits of serviceableness. 
Moreover, the society of which the child is to 
be a member is, in the United States, a demo- 

^ cratic and progressive society. The child must 
be educated for leadership as well as for obedi- 
ence. He must have power of self-direction and 
power of directing others, power of administra- 
tion, ability to assume positions of responsibility. 
This necessity of educating for leadership is as 

, great on the industrial as on the political side. 
New inventions, new machines, new methods of 

10 



IN EDUCATION 

transportation and intercourse are making over 
the whole scene of action year by year. It is an 
absohite impossibility to educate the child for any 
fixed station in life. So far as education is con- 
ducted unconsciously or consciously on this basis, 
it results in fitting the future citizen for no sta- 
tion in life, but makes him a drone, a hanger-on, 
or an actual retarding influence in the onward 
movement. Instead of caring for himself and for 
others, he becomes one who has himself to be 
cared for. Here, too, the ethical responsibility of 
the school on the social side must be interpreted 
in the broadest and freest spirit ; it is equivalent 
to that training of the child which will give him 
such possession of himself that he may take charge 
of himself ; may not only adapt himself to the 
changes that are going on, but have power to 
shape and direct them. 

Apart from participation in social life, the " 
school has no moral end nor aim. As long as we 
confine ourselves to the school as an isolated in- 
stitution, we have no directing principles, because 
we have no object. For example, the end of edu- 
cation is said to be the harmonious development 

II 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

of all the powers of the individual. Here no refer- 
ence to social life or membership is apparent, and 
yet many think we have in it an adequate and 
thoroughgoing definition of the goal of educa- 
tion. But if this definition be taken independ- 
ently of social relationship we have no way of 
telling what is meant by any one of the terms 
employed. We do not know what a power is ; 
we do not know what development is ; we do not 
know what harmony is. A power is a power only 
with reference to the use to which it is put, the 
function it has to serve. If we leave out the uses 
supplied by social life we have nothing but the 
old "faculty psychology" to tell what is meant 
by power and what the specific powers are. The 
principle reduces itself to enumerating a lot of 
faculties like perception, memory, reasoning, etc., 
and then stating that each one of these powers 
needs to be developed. 

Education then becomes a gymnastic exercise. 
Acute powers of observation and memory might 
be developed by studying Chinese characters ; 
acuteness in reasoning might be got by discuss- 
ing the scholastic subtleties of the Middle 

12 



IN EDUCATION 

Ages. The simple fact is that there is no isolated 
faculty of observation, or memory, or reasoning 
anymore than there is an original faculty of black- 
smithing, carpentering, or steam engineering. 
Faculties mean simply that particular impulses 
and habits have been coordinated or framed with 
reference to accomplishing certain definite kinds 
of work. We need to know the social situations 
in which the individual will have to use ability to 
observe, recollect, imagine, and reason, in order 
to have any way of telling what a training of men- 
tal powers actually means. 

What holds in the illustration of this particu- 
lar definition of education holds good from what- 
ever point of view we approach the matter. Only > 
as we interpret school activities with reference to 
the larger circle of social activities to which they 
relate do we find any standard for judging their 
moral significance. 

Thel school itself must be a vital social insti-* 
tution to a much greater extent than obtains at 
present. I am told that there is a swimming 
school in a certain city where youth are taught 
to swim without going into the water, being re- 

13 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

peatedly drilled in the various movements which 
are necessary for swimming. When one of the 
young men so trained was asked what he did when 
he got into the water, he laconically replied, 
" Sunk." The story happens to be true ; were 
it not, it would seem to be a fable made expressly 
for the purpose of typifying the ethical relation- 
ship of school to society. The school cannot be 
a preparation for social life excepting as it repro-f 
duces, within itself, typical conditions of social 
life. At present it is largely engaged in the futile 
task of Sisyphus. It is endeavoring to form habits 
in children for use in a social life which, it would 
almost seem, is carefully and purposely kept 
away from vital contact with the child under- 
going training. The only way to prepare for 
social life is to engage in social life. To form 
habits of social usefulness and serviceableness 
apart from any direct social need and motive, 
apart from any existing social situation, is, to the 
letter, teaching the child to swim by going through 
motions outside of the water. The most indis- 
pensable condition is left out of account, and the 
results are correspondingly partial 

14 



IN EDUCATION 

The much lamented separation in the schools 
of intellectual and moral training, of acquiring 
information and growing in character, is simply 
one expression of the failure to conceive and con- 
struct the school as a social institution, having 
social life and value within itself. Except so far * 
as the school is an embryonic typical community 
life, moral training must be partly pathological , 
and partly formal Training is pathological when 
stress is laid upon correcting wrong-doing instead 
of upon forming habits of positive service. Too 
often the teacher's concern with the moral life 
of pupils takes the form of alertness for failures 
to conform to school rules and routine. These 
regulations, judged from the standpoint of the 
development of the child at the time, are more 
or less conventional and arbitrary. They are rules 
which have to be made in order that the existing 
modes of school work may go on ; but the lack of 
inherent necessity in these school modes reflects 
itself in a feeling, on the part of the child, that 
the moral discipline of the school is arbitrary. 
Any conditions that compel the teacher to take 
note of failures rather than of healthy growth 

15 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

give false standards and result in distortion and 
perversion. Attending to wrong-doing ought to 
be an incident rather than a principle. The child 
ought to have a positive consciousness of what 
he is about, so as to judge his acts from the stand- 
point of reference to the work which he has 
to do. Only in this way does he have a vital 
standard, one that enables him to turn failures to 
account for the future. 

' By saying that the moral training of the school 
is formal, I mean that the moral habits currently 
emphasized by the school are habits which are 
created, as it were, ad hoc. Even the habits of 
promptness, regularity, industry, non-interfer- 
ence with the work of others, faithfulness to 
"^ tasks imposed, which are specially inculcated in 
the school, are habits that are necessary simply 
because the school system is what it is, and must 
be preserved intact. If we grant the inviolability 
of the school system as it is, these habits repre- 
sent permanent and necessary moral ideas ; but 
just in so far as the school system is itself 
isolated and mechanical, insistence upon these 
moral habits is more or less unreal, because the 

i6 



IN EDUCATION 

ideal to which they relate is not itself necessary. 
The duties, in other words, are distinctly school 
duties, not life duties. If we compare this condi- 
tion with that of the well-ordered home, we find 
that the duties and responsibilities that the child 
has there to recognize do not belong to the 
family as a specialized and isolated institution, 
but flow from the very nature of the social life in 
which the family participates and to which it con- 
tributes. The child ought to have the same mo- 
tives for right doing and to be judged by the same 
standards in the school, as the adult in the wider 
social life to which he belongs. Interest in com- 
munity welfare, an interest that is intellectual 
and practical, as well as emotional — an interest, 
that is to say, in perceiving whatever makes for 
social order and progress, and in carrying these 
principles into execution — is the moral habit to 
which all the special school habits must be related 
if they are to be animated by the breath of life. 



THE MORAL TRAINING FROM 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION 



Ill 

THE MORAL TRAINING FROM 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION 

The principle of the social character of the school 
as the basic factor in the moral education given 
may be also applied to the question of methods 
of instruction, — not in their details, but their 
general spirit. The emphasis then falls upon 
construction and giving out, rather than upon 
absorption and mere learning. We fail to recog- 
nize how essentially individualistic the latter 
methods are, and how unconsciously, yet certainly 
and effectively, they react into the child's ways 
of judging and of acting. Imagine forty children 
all engaged in reading the same books, and in 
preparing and reciting the same lessons day after 
day. Suppose this process constitutes by far the 
larger part of their work, and that they are con- 
tinually judged from the standpoint of what they 
are able to take in in a study hour and repro- 
duce in a recitation hour. There is next to no 

21 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

opportunity for any social division of labor. 
There is no opportunity for each child to work 
out something specifically his own, which he may 
contribute to the common stock, while he, in turn, 
participates in the productions of others. All are 
set to do exactly the same work and turn out the 
same products. The social spirit is not cultivated, 
— in fact, in so far as the purely individualistic 
method gets in its work, it atrophies for lack of 
use. One reason why reading aloud in school is 
poor is that the real motive for the use of lan- 
guage — the desire to communicate and to learn 
— is not utilized. The child knows perfectly well 
that the teacher and all his fellow pupils have 
exactly the same facts and ideas before them that 
he has ; he is not ^^W;^^ them anything at all. 
And it may be questioned whether the moral 
lack is not as great as the intellectual. The child 
is born with a natural desire to give out, to do, to 
serve. When this tendency is not used, when 
conditions are such that other motives are sub- 
stituted, the accumulation of an influence working 
against the social spirit is much larger than we 
have any idea of, — especially when the burden 

22 



IN EDUCATION 

of work, week after week, and year after year, 
falls upon this side. 

But lack of cultivation of the social spirit is 
not all. Positively individualistic motives and 
standards are inculcated. Some stimulus must 
be found to keep the child at his studies. At the ♦ 
best this will be his affection for his teacher, to- 
gether with a feeling that he is not violating 
school rules, and thus negatively, if not positively, 
is contributing to the good of the school. I have 
nothing to say against these motives so far as 
they go, but they are inadequate. The relation 
between the piece of work to be done and affec- 
tion for a third person is external, not intrinsic. It 
is therefore liable to break down whenever the 
external conditions are changed. Moreover, this 
attachment to a particular person, while in a way 
social, may become so isolated and exclusive as 
to be selfish in quality. In any case, the child 
should gradually grow out of this relatively ex- 
ternal motive into an appreciation, for its own 
sake, of the social value of what he has to do, 
because of its larger relations to life, not pinned 
down to two or three persons. 

23 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

But, unfortunately, the motive is not always 
at this relative best, but mixed with lower mo- 
tives which are distinctly egoistic. Fear is a mo- 
tive which is almost sure to enter in, — not ne- 
cessarily physical fear, or fear of punishment, but 
fear of losing the approbation of others ; or fear of 
failure, so extreme as to be morbid and paralyz- 
ing. On the other side, emulation and rivalry en- 
ter in. Just because all are doing the same work, 
and are judged (either in recitation or examina- 
tion with reference to grading and to promotion) 
not from the standpoint of their personal con- 
tribution, but from that of comparative success, 
the feeling of superiority over others is unduly 
appealed to, while timid children are depressed. 
Children are judged with reference to their ca- 
pacity to realize the same external standard. The 
weaker gradually lose their sense of power, and 
accept a position of continuous and persistent 
inferiority. The effect upon both self-respect and 
respect for work need not be dwelt upon. The 
strong learn to glory, not in their strength, but 
in the fact that they are stronger. The child 
is prematurely launched into the region of in- 

24 



IN EDUCATION 

dividualistic competition, and this in a direction 
where competition is least applicable, namely, in 
intellectual and artistic matters, whose law is co- 
operation and participation. 

Next, perhaps, to the evils of passive absorp- 
tion and of competition for external standing 
come, perhaps, those which result from the eter- 
nal emphasis upon preparation for a remote fu- 
ture. I do not refer here to the waste of energy 
and vitality that accrues when children, who live so 
largely in the immediate present, are appealed to 
in the name of a dim and uncertain future which 
means little or nothing to them, I have in mind 
rather the habitual procrastination that develops 
when the motive for work is future, not present; 
and the false standards of judgment that are cre- 
ated when work is estimated, not on the basis of 
present need and present responsibility, but by 
reference to an external result, like passing an 
examination, getting promoted, entering high 
school, getting into college, etc. Who can reckon 
up the loss of moral power that arises from the 
constant impression that nothing is worth doing 
in itself, but only as a preparation for something 

25 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

else, which in turn is only a getting ready for some 
genuinely serious end beyond? Moreover, as a 
rule, it will be found that remote success is an 
end which appeals most to those in whom egoistic 
desire to get ahead — to get ahead of others — 
is already only too strong a motive. Those in 
whom personal ambition is already so strong that 
it paints glowing pictures of future victories may 
be touched ; others of a more generous nature do 
not respond. 

' I cannot stop to paint the other side. I can 
only say that the introduction of every method 
that appeals to the child's active powers, to his 
capacities in construction, production, and crea- 
tion, marks an opportunity to shift the centre of 
ethical gravity from an absorption which is selfish 
to a service which is social. Manual training is, 
more than manual ; it is more than intellectual ; 
in the hands of any good teacher it lends itself 
easily, and almost as a matter of course, to de- 
velopment of social habits. Ever since the phi- 
losophy of Kant, it has been a commonplace of 
aesthetic theory, that art is universal ; that it is 
not the product of purely personal desire or appe- 

26 



IN EDUCATION 

tite, or capable of merely individual appropria- 
tion, but has a value participated in by all who 
perceive it. Even in the schools where most con- 
scious attention is paid to moral considerations, 
the methods of study and recitation may be 
such as to emphasize appreciation rather than 
power, an emotional readiness to assimilate the 
experiences of others, rather than enlightened 
and trained capacity to carry forward those values 
which in other conditions and past times made 
those experiences worth having. At all events, 
separation between instruction and character 
continues in our schools (in spite of the efforts of 
individual teachers) as a result of divorce between 
learning and doing. The attempt to attach genu- 
ine moral effectiveness to the mere processes of 
learning, and to the habits which go along with 
learning, can result only in a training infected with 
formality, arbitrariness, and an undue emphasis 
upon failure to conform. That there is as much 
accomplished as there is shows the possibilities 
involved in methods of school activity which 
afford opportunity for reciprocity, cooperation, f 
and positive personal achievement. ^ 



THE SOCIAL NATURE OF THE 
COURSE OF STUDY 



IV 

THE SOCIAL NATURE OF THE 
COURSE OF STUDY 

In many respects, it is the subject-matter used 
in school life which decides both the general 
atmosphere of the school and the methods of in- 
struction and discipline which rule. A barren 
"course of study," that is to say, a meagre and 
narrow field of school activities, cannot possibly 
lend itself to the development of a vital social 
spirit or to methods that appeal to sympathy and 
cooperation instead of to absorption, exclusive- 
ness, and competition. Hence it becomes an all 
important matter to know how we shall apply 
our social standard of moral value to the subject- 
matter of school work, to what we call, tradition- 
ally, the " studies " that occupy pupils. 

A study is to be considered as a means of bring- 
ing the child to realize the social scene of action. 
Thus considered it gives a criterion for selection 
of material and for judgment of values. We have 

31 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

at present three independent values set up : one 
of culture, another of information, and another 
of discipline. In reality, these refer only to three 
phases of social interpretation. Information is 
genuine or educative only in so far as it pre- 
sents definite images and conceptions of materials 
placed in a context of social life. Discipline is 
genuinely educative only as it represents a re- 
action of information into the individual's own 
powers so that he brings them under control for 
social ends. Culture, if it is to be genuinely edu- 
cative and not an external polish or factitious 
varnish, represents the vital union of information 
and discipline. It marks the socialization of the 
individual in his outlook upon life. 

This point may be illustrated by brief reference 
to a few of the school studies. In the first place, 
there is no line of demarkation within facts 
themselves which classifies them as belonging to 
science, history, or geography, respectively. The 
pigeon-hole classification which is so prevalent at 
present (fostered by introducing the pupil at the 
outset into a number of different studies contained 
in different text-books) gives an utterly errone- 

32 



IN EDUCATION 

ous idea of the relations of studies to one another 
and to the intellectual whole to which all be- 
long. In fact, these subjects have to do with the 
same ultimate reality, namely, the conscious ex- 
perience of man. It is only because we have 
different interests, or different ends, that we sort 
out the material and label part of it science, part 
of it history, part geography, and so on. Each 
*^ sorting" represents materials arranged with 
reference to some one dominant typical aim or 

process of the social life; 

This social criterion is necessary, not only 
to mark off studies from one another, but also 
to grasp the reasons for each study, — the mo- 
tives in connection with which it shall be pre- 
sented. How, for example, should we define 
geography ? What is the unity in the different 
so-called divisions of geography, — mathematical 
geography, physical geography, political geogra- 
phy, commercial geography.? Are they purely 
empirical classifications dependent upon the brute 
fact that we run across a lot of different facts .? Or 
is there some intrinsic principle through which 
the material is distributed under these various 

33 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

heads, — something in the interest and attitude 
of the human mind towards them ? I should say 
that geography has to do with all those aspects of 
social life which are concerned with the interac- 
tion of the life of man and nature ; or, that it has 
to do with the world considered as the scene of 
social interaction. Any fact, then, will be geo- 
graphical in so far as it has to do with the^ de- 
pendence of man upon his natural envifonment, 
or with changes introduced in this environment 
through the life of man. 

The four forms of geography referred to above 
represent, then, four increasing stages of abstrac- 
tion in discussing the mutual relation of human 
life and nature. The beginning must be social 
geography, the frank recognition of the earth as 
the home of men acting m relations to one another. 
I mean by this that the essence of any geographi- 
cal fact is the consciousness of two persons, or two 
groups of persons, who are at once separated and 
connected by their physical environment, and that 
the interest is in seeing how these people are at once 
kept ap^and brought together in their actions by 
the instrumentality of the physical environment, 

34 



y ■ 



IN EDUCATION 

The ultimateu^significance of lake, river, moun- 
tain, and .plain is not physical but social; it is the 
part which it plays in modifying and directing 
human relationships. This evidently involves an 
extension of the term commercial. It has to 
do not simply with business, in the narrow sense, 
but with whatever relates to human intercourse 
and intercommunication as affected by natural 
forms and properties. Political geography repre- 
sents this same social interaction taken in a static 
instead of in a dynamic way ; taken, that is, as 
temporarily crystallized and fixed in certain forms. 
Physical geography (including under this not 
simply physiography, but also the study of flora 
and fauna) represents a further analysis or ab- 
straction. It studies the conditions which deter- 
mine human action, leaving out of account, tem- 
porarily, the ways in which they concretely do 
this. Mathematical geography carries the analysis 
back to more ultimate and remote conditions, 
showing that the physical conditions of the earth 
are not ultimate, but depend upon the place which 
the world occupies in a larger system. Here, in 
other words, are traced, step by step, the links 

35 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

which connect the immediate social occupations 
and groupings of men with the whole natural sys- 
tem which ultimately conditions them. Step by 
step the scene is enlarged and the image of what 
enters into the make-up of social action is widened 
and broadened; at no time is the chain of con- 
nection to be broken. 

It is out of the question to take up the studies 
one by one and show that their meaning is simi- 
larly controlled by social considerations. But I 
cannot forbear saying a word or two upon history. 
History is vital or dead to the child according. as 
it is, or is not, presented from the sociological 
standpoint. When treated simply as a record of 
what has passed and gone, it must be mechanical, 
because the past, as the past, is remote. Simply 
as the past there is no motive for attending to 
it. The ethical value of history teaching will be 
measured by the extent to which past events are 
made the means of understanding the present, — 
affording insight into what makes up the struc- 
ture and working of society to-day. Existing so- 
cial structure is exceedingly complex. It is prac- 
tically impossible for the child to attack it en 

36 



IN EDUCATION 

masse and get any definite mental image of it. 
But type phases of historical development may be 
selected which will exhibit, as through a telescope, 
the essential constituents of the existing order. 
Greece, for example, represents what art and grow- 
ing power of individual expression stand for; 
Rome exhibits the elements and forces of politi- 
cal life on a tremendous scale. Or, as these civili- 
zations are themselves relatively complex, a study 
of still simpler forms of hunting, nomadic, and 
agricultural life in the beginnings of civilization, 
a study of the effects of the introduction of iron, 
and iron tools, reduces the complexity to simpler 
elements. 

One reason historical teaching is usually not 
more effective is that the student is set to acquire 
information in such a way that no epochs or fac- 
tors stand out in his mind as typical; everything 
is reduced to the same dead level. The way to 
secure the necessary perspective is to treat the 
past as if it were a projected present with some 
of its elements enlarged. 

The principle of contrast is as important as 
that of similarity. Because the present life is so 

37 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

close to us, touching us at every point, we cannot 
get away from it to see it as it really is. Nothing 
stands out clearly or sharply as characteristic. In 
the study of past periods, attention necessarily 
attaches itself to striking dififerences. Thus the 
child gets a locus of imagination, through which 
he can remove himself from the pressure of pres- 
ent surrounding circumstances and define them. 
History is equally available in teaching the 
methods of social progress. It is commonly stated 
that history must be studied from the standpoint 
of cause and effect. The truth of this statement 
depends upon its interpretation. Social life is so 
complex and the various parts of it are so organi- 
cally related to one another and to the natural 
environment, that it is impossible to say that this 
or that thing is the cause of some other particu- 
lar thing. But the study of history can reveal the 
main instruments in the discoveries, inventions, 
new modes of life, etc., which have initiated the 
great epochs of social advance ; and it can present 
to the child types of the main lines of social pro- 
gress, and can set before him what have been the 
chief difficulties and obstructions in the way of 

38 



IN EDUCATION 
progress. Once more this can be done only in so 
far as it is recognized that social forces in them- 
selves are always the same, — that the same kind 
of influences were at work one hundred and one 
thousand years ago that are now working, — and 
that particular historical epochs afford illustra- 
tion of the way in which the fundamental forces 
work. 

Everything depends, then, upon history being 
treated from a social standpoint; as manifesting 
the agencies which have influenced social devel- 
opment and as presenting the typical institutions 
in which social life has expressed itself. The 
culture-epoch theory, while working in the right 
direction, has failed to recognize the importance 
of treating past periods with relation to the pres- 
ent, — as affording insight into the representa- 
tive factors of its structure ; it has treated these 
periods too much as if they had some meaning 
or value in themselves. The way in which the 
biographical method is handled illustrates the 
same point. It is often treated in such a way as 
to exclude from the child's consciousness (or at 
least not sufficiently to emphasize) the social 

39 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

forces and principles involved in the association 
of the masses of men. It is quite true that the 
child is easily interested in history from the bio- 
graphical standpoint; but unless "the hero" is 
treated in relation to the community life behind 
him that he sums up and directs, there is danger 
that history will reduce itself to a mere exciting 
story. Then moral instruction reduces itself to 
drawing certain lessons from the life of the par- 
ticular personalities concerned, instead of widen- 
ing and deepening the child's imagination of social 
relations, ideals, and means. 

It will be remembered that I am not making 
these points for their own sake, but with refer- 
ence to the general principle that when a study is 
taught as a mode of understanding social life it 
has positive ethical import. What thenormal child 
continuously needs is not so much isolated moral 
lessons upon the importance of truthfulness and 
honesty, or the beneficent results that follow from 
a particular act of patriotism, as the formation 
of habits of social imagination and conception. 

I take one more illustration, namely, mathe- 
matics. This does, or does not, accomplish its 

40 



IN EDUCATION 

full purpose according as it is, or is not, presented 
as a social tool. The prevailing divorce between 
information and character, between knowledge 
and social action, stalks upon the scene here. 
The moment mathematical study is severed from 
the place which it occupies with reference to use 
in social life, it becomes unduly abstract, even 
upon the purely intellectual side. It is presented 
as a matter of technical relations and formulae 
apart from any end or use. What the study of 
number suffers from in elementary education is 
lack.of motivation. Back of this and that and the 
other particular bad method is the radical mistake 
of treating number as if it were an end in itself, 
instead of the means of accomplishing some end. 
Let the child get a consciousness of what is the 
use of number, of what it really is for, and half the 
battle is won. Now this consciousness of the use 
of reason implies some end which is implicitly 
social. 

One of the absurd things in the more advanced 
study of arithmetic is the extent to which the 
child is introduced to numerical operations which 
have no distinctive mathematical principles char- 

41 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

acterizing them, but which represent certain gen- 
eral principles found in business . relationships. 
To train the child in these operations, while paying 
no attention to the business realities in which 
they are of use, or to the conditions of social 
life which make these business activities neces- 
sary, is neither arithmetic nor common sense. 
The child is called upon to do examples in inter- 
est, partnership, banking, brokerage, and so on 
through a long string, and no pains are taken to 
see that, in connection with the arithmetic, he 
has any sense of the social realities involved. 
This part of arithmetic is essentially sociological 
in its nature. It ought either to be omitted en- 
tirely, or else be taught in connection with a study 
of the relevant social realities. As we now man- 
age the study, it is the old case of learning to swim 
apart from the water over again, with correspond- 
ingly bad results on the practical side. 
, \ In concluding this portion of the discussion, 
we may say that our conceptions of moral edu- 
cation have been too narrow, too formal, and too 
pathological. We have associated the term ethical 
with certain special acts which are labeled virtues 

42 



IN EDUCATION 

and are set off from the mass of other acts, and are 
still more divorced from the habitual images and 
motives of the children performing them. Moral 
instruction is thus associated with teaching about 
these particular virtues, or with instilling certain 
sentiments in regard to them. The moral has been 
conceived in too goody-goody a way. Ultimate 
moral motives and forces are nothing more or 
less than social intelligence — the power of ob- 
serving and comprehending social situations, — 
and social power — trained capacities of control 
— at work in the service of social interest andi 
aims. There is no fact which throws light upon* 
the constitution of society, there is no power! 
whose training adds to social resourcefulness^ 
that is not moral. 

I sum up, then, this part of the discussion by 
asking your attention to the moral trinity of the 
school. The demand is for social intelligence, 
social power, and social interests. Our resources 
are (i) the life of the school as a social institu- 
tion in itself ; (2) methods of learning and of doing 
work ; and (3) the school studies or curriculum. 
In so far as the school represents, in its own 

43 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

spirit, a genuine community life ; in so far as 
what are called school discipline, government, 
order, etc., are the expressions of this inherent 
social spirit; in so far as the methods used are 
those that appeal to the active and constructive 
powers, permitting the child to give out and thus 
to serve ; in so far as the curriculum is so se- 
lected and organized as to provide the material 
for affording the child a consciousness of the 
world in which he has to play a part, and the de- 
mands he has to meet; so far as these ends 
are met, the school is organized on an ethical 
basis. So far as general principles are concerned, 
all the basic ethical requirements are met. The 
rest remains between^ the individual teacher and 
the individual child. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT 
OF MORAL EDUCATION 



V 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT 
OF MORAL EDUCATION 

So far we have been considering the make-up of 
purposes and results that constitute conduct — 
its "what." But conduct has a certain method 
and spirit also — its "how." Conduct may be 
looked upon as expressing the attitudes and dispo- 
sitions of an individual, as well as realizing social 
results and maintaining the social fabric. A con- 
sideration of conduct as a mode of individual per- 
formance, personal doing, takes us from the social 
to the psychological side of morals. In the first 
place, all conduct springs ultimately and radically 
out of native instincts and impulses. We must 
know what these instincts and impulses are, and 
what they are at each particular stage of the 
child's development, in order to know what to ap- 
peal to and what to build upon. Neglect of this 
principle may give a mechanical imitation of 
moral conduct, but the imitation will be ethically 

47 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

dead, because it is external and has its centre 
without, not within, the individual. We must 
.^ study the child, in other words, to get our indica- 
ftions, our symptoms, our suggestions. The more 
lor less spontaneous acts of the child are not to 
be thought of as setting moral forms to which the 
efforts of the educator must conform — this would 
result simply in spoiling the child; but they are 
symptoms which require to be interpreted: stim- 
uli which need to be responded to in directed ways ; 
material which, in however transformed a shape, 
is the only ultimate constituent of future moral 
conduct and character. 

Then, secondly, our ethical principles need to 
be stated in psychological terms because the 
child supplies us with the only means or instru- 
ments by which to realize moral ideals. The sub- 
ject-matter of the curriculum, however important, 
I however judiciously selected, is empty of conclu- 
sive moral content until it is made over into terms 
; of the individual's own activities, habits, and de- 
sires. Wemust know what history, geography, and 
mathematics mean in psychological terms, that 
is, as modes of personal experiencing, before 

48 



IN EDUCATION ' 

we can get out of them their moral potentiali- 
ties. 

The psychological side of education sums itself 
up, of course, in a consideration of character. 
It is a commonplace to say that the develop- 
ment of character is the end of all school work. 
The difficulty lies in the execution of the idea. 
And an underlying difficulty in this execution is 
the lack of a clear conception of what character 
means. This may seem an extreme statement. 
If so, the idea may be conveyed by saying that 
we generally conceive of character simply in 
terms of results ; we have no clear conception of 
it in psychological terms — that is, as a process, 
as working or dynamic. We know what character 
means in terms of the actions which proceed from 
it, but we have not a definite conception of it on 
its inner side, as a system of working forces. 

(i) Force, efficiency in execution, or overt ac- 
tion, is one necessary constituent of character. 
In our moral books and lectures we may lay the 
stress upon good intentions, etc. But we know 
practically that the kind of character we hope to 
build up through our education is one that not 

49 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

only has good intentions, but that insists upon 
carrying them out. Any other character is wishy- 
washy ; it is goody, not good. The individual 
must have the power to stand up and count for 
something in the actual conflicts of life. He must 
have initiative, insistence, persistence, courage, 
and industry. He must, in a word, have all that 
goes under the name ^' force oi character." Un- 
doubtedly, individuals differ greatly in their native 
endowment in this respect. None the less, each 
has a certain primary equipment of impulse, of 
tendency forward, of innate urgency to do. The 
problem of education on this side is that of dis- 
covering what this native fund of power is, and 
then of utilizing it in such a way (affording con- 
ditions which both stimulate and control) as to 
organize it into definite conserved modes of ac- 
tion — habits. 

(2) But something more is required than sheer 
force. Sheer force may be brutal; it may over- 
ride the interests of others. Even when aiming 
at right ends it may go at them in such a way as 
to violate the rights of others. More than this, 
in sheer force there is no guarantee for the right 

50 



IN EDUCATION 

end. Efficiency may be directed towards mistaken 
ends and result in positive mischief and destruc- 
tion. Power, as already suggested, must be di- 
rected. It must be organized along social chan- 
nels ; it must be attached to valuable ends. 

This involves training on both the intellectual 
and emotional side. On the intellectual side we 
must have judgment — what is ordinarily called 
good sense. The difference between mere know- 
ledge, or information, and judgment is that the 
former is simply held, not used ; judgment is 
knowledge directed with reference to the accom- 
plishment of ends. Good judgment is a sense of 
respective or proportionate values. The one who 
has judgment is the one who has ability to size 
up a situation. He is the one who can grasp the 
scene or situation before him, ignoring what is 
irrelevant, or what for the time being is unimpor- 
tant, who can seize upon the factors which demand 
attention, and grade them according to their re- 
spective claims. Mere knowledge of what the 
right is, in the abstract, mere intentions of follow- 
ing the right in general, however praiseworthy 
in themselves, are never a substitute for this 

SI 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

power of trained judgment. Action is always in 
the concrete. It is definite and individualized. 
Except, therefore, as it is backed and controlled 
by a knowledge of the actual concrete factors in 
the situation in which it occurs, it must be rela- 
tively futile and waste. 

(3) But the consciousness of ends must be more 
than merely intellectual. We can imagine a person 
with most excellent judgment, who yet does not 
act upon his judgment. There must not only be 
force to insure effort in execution against ob- 
stacles, but there must also be a delicate personal 
responsiveness, — there must be an emotional re- 
action. Indeed, good judgment is impossible with- 
out this susceptibility. Unless there is a prompt 
and almost instinctive sensitiveness to condi- 
tions, to the ends and interests of others, the in- 
tellectual side of judgment will not have proper 
material to work upon. ^ Just as the material of 
knowledge is supplied through the senses, so 
the material of ethical knowledge is supplied by 
emotional responsiveness. It is difficult to put 
this quality into words, but we all know the dif- 
ference between the character which is hard and 

52 



IN EDUCATION 

formal, and one which is sympathetic, flexible, 
and open. In the abstract the former may be as 
sincerely devoted to moral ideas as is the latter, 
but as a practical matter we prefer to live with 
the latter. We count upon it to accomplish 
more by tact, by instinctive recognition of the 
claims of others, by skill in adjusting, than the 
former can accomplish by mere attachment to 
rules. 

) Here, then, is the moral standard, by which 
to test the work of the school upon the side of 
what it does directly for individuals, {a) Does 
the school as a system, at present, attach suffi- 
cient importance to the spontaneous instincts 
and impulses .? Does it afford sufficient opportu- 
nity for these to assert themselves and work out 
their own results.? Can we even say that the 
school in principle attaches itself, at present, to 
the active constructive powers rather than to pro- 
cesses of absorption and learning .? Does not our 
talk about self -activity largely render itself mean- 
ingless because the self -activity we have in mind 
is purely "intellectual," out of relation to those 
impulses which work through hand and eye t 

53 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

Just in so far as the present school methods 
fail to meet the test of such questions moral re- 
sults must be unsatisfactory. We cannot secure 
the development of positive force of character 
unless we are willing to pay its price. We cannot 
smother and repress the child's powers, or grad- 
ually abort them (from failure of opportunity for 
exercise), and then expect a character with initia- 
tive and consecutive industry. I am aware of the 
importance attaching to inhibition, but mere in- 
hibition is valueless. The only restraint, the only 
holding-in, that is of any worth is that which 
comes through holding powers concentrated 
upon a positive end J An end cannot be attained 
excepting as instincts and impulses are kept from 
discharging at random and from running off on 
side tracks. In keeping powers at work upon their 
relevant ends, there is sufficient opportunity for 
genuine inhibition. To say that inhibition is 
higher than power, is like saying that death is 
more than life, negation more than affirmation, 
sacrifice more than service. 

'{b) We must also test our school work by find- 
ing whether it affords the conditions necessary 

54 



IN EDUCATION 

for the formation of good judgment. Judgment 
as the sense of relative values involves ability to 
select, to discriminate. Acquiring information 
can never develop the power of judgment. De- 
velopment of judgment is in spite of, not because 
of, methods of instruction that emphasize sim- 
ple learning. The test comes only when the in- 
formation acquired has to be put to use. Will it 
do what we expect of it ^ 1 have heard an educator 
of large experience say that in her judgment the 
greatest defect of instruction to-day, on the intel- 
lectual side, is found in the fact that children 
leave school without a mental perspective. Facts 
seem to them all of the same importance. There 
is no foreground or background. There is no in- 
stinctive habit of sorting out facts upon a scale 
of worth and of grading them. 

The child cannot get power of judgment ex- 
cepting as he is continually exercised in forming 
and testing judgments. He must have an oppor- 
tunity to select for himself, and to attempt to put 
his selections into execution, that he may submit 
them to the final test, that of action. Only thus 
can he learn to discriminate that which promises 

55 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

success from that which promises failure ; only 
thus can he form the habit of relating his pur- 
poses and notions to the conditions that deter- 
mine their value. Does the school, as a system, 
afford at present sufficient opportunity for this 
sort of experimentation? Except so far as the 
emphasis of the school work is upon intelligent 
doing, upon active investigation, it does not fur- 
nish the conditions necessary for that exercise 
of judgment which is an integral factor in good 
character. 

{c) I shall be brief with respect to the other 
point, the need of susceptibility and responsive- 
ness. The informally social side of education, the 
aesthetic environment and influences, are all- 
important. In so far as the work is laid out in 
regular and formulated ways, so far as there are 
lacking opportunities for casual and free social 
intercourse between pupils and between the pu- 
pils and the teacher, this side of the child's nature 
is either starved, or else left to find haphazard 
expression along more or less secret channels. 
When the school system, under plea of the prac- 
tical (meaning by the practical the narrowly utili- 

56 



IN EDUCATION 

tarian), confines the child to the three R's and 
the formal studies connected with them' shuts 
him out from the vital in literature and history, 
and deprives him of his right to contact with 
what is best in architecture, music, sculpture, and 
picture, it is hopeless to expect definite results 
in the training of sympathetic openness and re- 
sponsiveness. 

/ What we need in education is a genuine faith 
in the existence of moral principles which are 
capable of effective application. We believe, so 
far as the mass of children are concerned, that if 
we keep at them long enough we can teach read- 
ing and writing and figuring. We are practically, 
even if unconsciously, skeptical as to the pos- 
sibility of anything like the same assurance in 
morals. We believe in moral laws and rules, to 
be sure, but they are in the air. They are some- 
thing set off by themselves. They are so very 
** moral " that they have no working contact with 
the average affairs of every-day life. These moral 
principles need to be brought down to the ground 
through their statement in social and in psy- 

57 



MORAL PRINCIPLES 

chological terms. We need to see that moral 
principles are not arbitrary, that they are not 
"transcendental"; that the term "moral" does 
not designate a special region or portion of life. 
We need to translate the moral into the condi- 
tions and forces of our community life, and into 
the impulses and habits of the individual. 

All the rest is mint, anise, and cummin. The 
one thing needful is that we recognize that 
moral principles are real in the same sense in 
which other forces are real ; that they are inherent 
in community life, and in the working structure 
of the individual. If we can secure a genuine faith 
in this fact, we shall have secured the condition 
which alone is necessary to get from our edu- 
cational system all the effectiveness there is in 
it. The teacher who operates in this faith will 
find every subject, every method of instruction, 
every incident of school life pregnant with moral 
possibility. 



OUTLINE 

I. THE MORAL PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 

1. Moral ideas and ideas about morality . . . . i 

2. Moral education and direct moral instruction . . 3 

II. THE MORAL TRAINING GIVEN BY THE 

SCHOOL COMMUNITY 

1. The unity of social ethics and school ethics . . 7 

2. A narrow and formal training for citizenship . . 8 

3. School life should train for many social relations 9 

4. It should train for self-direction and leadership . 10 

5. There is no harmonious development of powers 

apart from social situations 1 1 

6. School activities should be typical of social life . 13 

7. Moral training in the schools tends to be patho- 

logical and formal 15 

III. THE MORAL TRAINING FROM METHODS 

OF INSTRUCTION 

1. Active social service as opposed to passive indi- 

vidual absorption 21 

2. The positive inculcation of individualistic motives 

and standards .23 

3. The evils of competition for external standing . 24 

4. The moral waste of remote success as an end . . 25 

5. The worth of active and social modes of learning 26 

59 



! X- 



OUTLINE 

~X IV. THE SOCIAL NATURE OF THE COURSE 

OF STUDY 

1. The nature of the course of study influences the 

conduct of the school 31 ^ 

2. School studies as means of realizing social situ- Oyj^^ 

ations 31 

V 3. School subjects are merely phases of a unified ^y^ 

social life 32 

\ 4. The meaning of subjects is controlled by social 
^* considerations 33 

5. Geography deals with the scenes of social inter- 

action 33 

6. Jts-various forms represent increasing stages of 

abstraction 34 

7. History is a means for interpreting existing 

social relations 36 

8. It presents type phases of social development . 37 

9. It offers contrasts, and consequently perspective 37 

10. It teaches the methods of social progress . . . 38 ' 

11. The failure of certain methods of teaching his- 

tory 39 

12. Mathematics is a means to social ends .... 40 
, y i;0. "TT^e sociological nature of business arithmetic .41 

14. Summary: The moral trinity of the school . .42 

V. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORAL 
L X. EDUCATION 

,;v'- » V' 

I. Conduct as a mode of individual performance . 47 
Native instincts and impulses a,re the sources pi w j 

conduct V,.!^.-'i'WMir 

Moral ideals must be realized in persons ... 48 

60 



2. 



OUTLINE iylJy^' 

4. Character as a system of working forces ... 49 

5. Force as a necessary constituent of character . 49 

6. The importance of intellectual judgment or good , > 

sense .... . P ' 50 

7. The capacity for delicate emotional responsive- 

ness 52 

8. Summary : The ethical standards for testing the 

school 53 

9. Conclusion : The practicality of moral principles S7 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



LtMy'30 



